International cuisine

Read the texts about British and American meals, translate them in writing, answer the questions after each text.

Traditional American Food

Americans eat a lot. They have three meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Most of Americans don’t eat at home but prefer to go to restaurants. They can choose from many kinds of restaurants. There is a great number of ethnic restaurants in the United States: Italian, Chinese and Mexican food is very popular.

An American institution is the fast food restaurant, which is very convenient but not very healthy.

However there are some principles of American cuisine (if we may call it so). Americans drink a lot of juices and soda, eat a lot of meat, fruit and vegetables, not much bread. In the morning Americans have cereal or scrambled eggs, milk or orange juice. Chicken or pork, fried potatoes, vegetable salad and dessert – this is the most common menu for lunch. Dinner is probably the most important meal of the day, some people have family dinner, when all members of the family have to be there. For dinner Americans usually have meat, fried or baked potatoes with ketchup or sour cream, corn, peas, sometimes macaroni and cheese or spaghetti; ice-cream, fruit or cake may be for dessert.

Turkey, ham and apple pie are traditional for Christmas and Thanksgiving Day dinners.

Questions

1. How many times a day do Americans eat?

2. Do Americans like to eat at home?

3. What kind of restaurants is popular in the USA?

4. What do Americans eat for breakfast?

5. What is the most important meal of the day?

6. What is a family dinner?

7. What dishes are traditional for Christmas and Thanksgiving Day dinners?

British Meals

Traditionally English people have three meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Breakfast is served in the morning. It is used to be a large meal with cereal, eggs and bacon, sausages, tomatoes. But such a large breakfast takes a long time to prepare and is not very healthy. Nowadays Britain’s most popular breakfast consists of cereal, toast with marmalade, juice and yogurt with a cup of tea or coffee.

Lunch is a light meal. Most people have no time to go back home for lunch so they eat at schools, cafes, pubs or restaurants.

The main meal is dinner, which is usually between 6 and 7 p.m. A typical evening meal is a meat with vegetables and dessert.

The most important meal of the week is the Sunday dinner, which is usually eaten at 1 p.m. The traditional Sunday day dish used to be roast beef, but nowadays pork, chicken or lamb are more common.

On Sunday evenings people have supper or high tea. The famous British afternoon tea is becoming rare, except at weekends.

Questions

1. How many meals a day do English people have?

2. What did they use to eat for breakfast?

3. What do they usually eat nowadays?

4. Is lunch a large meal?

5. What dishes are served for dinner?

6. What is the most important meal of the week?

7. Is British afternoon tea still popular?